Book Reviews

Fujimura, Makoto. Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2016, pp. 261, $26, hardback. Makoto Fujimura is a distinguished contemporary visual artist, specializing in a traditional Japanese style of painting known as nihonga. As the founder of the International Arts Movement and the director of the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts at Fuller Theological Seminary, Fujimura is a prominent voice in the field of theology and the arts. He has written multiple books in this field, including Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art and Culture (NavPress, 2009) and Culture Care (Fujimura Institute and International Arts Movement, 2014). In Silence and Beauty, Fujimura interacts with Shusaku Endo’s acclaimed twentieth-century novel, Silence, to explore the nature of faith and grace in the midst of failure—and to engage with philosophical issues such as the problem of evil and the hiddenness of God in times of suffering (pp. 27-28). For Fujimura, Endo’s novel grants insight into the nature of Japanese culture, aesthetics, and Christianity. The novel chronicles the apostasy of seventeenth-century Christian missionaries to Japan who publicly renounced Christ by stomping on fumi-e, which are “relief bronze sculptures [of Jesus and Mary]” (p. 23). Those…

Radner, Ephraim. A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of Human Life. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016, pp. 304, $49.95, hardback. The significance and meaning of the anthropos has and continues to capture the imagination of ancient and contemporary reflections. Several recent reflections highlight human constitution, the afterlife, sexuality, and race, among others. Ephraim Radner’s A Time to Keep touches on these important topics, but his approach is unique. Radner claims that an understanding of humanity must take into account the theological nature of time. Radner makes an important contribution that advances a rich vision of humanity situated in the scriptural story, guided by various theological authorities, and informed by the social sciences. Radner advances the argument that humans are relational (i.e., filliated) beings shaped and molded by God’s design of creation, redemption, and death. On that basis, he exhorts us to count our days. Our days are numbered as creatures. Between birth and death, we have a vocation and purpose. Life, death, toil and generative relationship shapes and forms the patterns of human living (p.16). Radner sees this reality in the “figural” portrayal of redemption in “tunics of skins” or clothes, which is a metaphor for the…